Category: Improvement

On February 13th one of the more interesting events of my chess career came to an end.

The Quality Chess Book Challenge started by an offhand comment by my friend, NM Richard Martin, that QC’s products were so good that it should be possible to improve greatly using nothing by their materials.

So I decided to give it a year. The one thing that I refused to be dogmatic about was not using anything when no QC product existed.

So for example, lacking much material on endgames I used Minev’s book on rook endings when I wanted to study them. I also used a lot of online and book resources to work on tactics.

So how did things go? What were the successes? Failures? And where do we go from here?

The first, and most obvious, thing to look at would be rating. My rating started at 1804 and ended at 1761. So no real measure there. I don’t consider a 43 point rating loss a failure, but nor would I consider a 43 point gain to be any real mark of improvement.

The reason why I don’t consider these small types of moves to be much of anything is a situation like in my final game at my most recent tournament. I lost a game that had I won would have made more than a 30 point swing. Losing that game put me at 1761, while winning that game would have left me at 1793. I don’t see long term success and failure as measured by the results of only one or two games.

Things I though went well:

I think that my approach started out more disciplined. Knowing that I was limited in what I could use to study, I tended to put more focus into one thing at a time instead of flitting from thing to thing.

Sadly, that didn’t last, and by the end I was reading a few pages of one book before switching off to something different. Yet for the first eight or nine months I was definitely more focused.

So if I can tap in to that focus and keep it going I think that only good things can happen.

Another thing that I felt went well is that I developed more of a taste for solving that I used to have. Solving is a very important part of improvement as it’s the closest one can come to replicating game conditions while not playing.

What didn’t go well:

I was hoping that this challenge would give me more drive to push through and increase my study time. My friend Susan Polgar has said things along the lines of champions train when others are sleeping or watching TV.

Unfortunately I didn’t really study any more than I already do. On a great day I’ll get two hours. Typically that might be on a Saturday morning. On a good day I might get an hour. On a typical day it’s less than that. Maybe 30-40 minutes.

Partially this is due to being married. I’m not going to come home from work and tell my wife “Hi, bye, gotta go study chess now.” Which means that I typically don’t get to start working on chess until after she goes to bed.

So 10:00-10:30pm is usually my start time. As I get up at 5:15am to go to work I can’t push the envelope too far. Of course this means that I’m not exactly at peak performance when I do study.

So where do we go from here?

The first thing that I am going to do is set myself a new challenge. I plan on reading books two and three in the Yusupov series this year. Sure, that’s not much, but it’s easily doable.

The second thing that I plan on doing is starting to spend at least one hour going over the openings of each game I play. I need to learn more theory than I currently know, so I’ll do this in bite size chunks.

The third thing that I’m going to do is to work on making the study time I do have more efficient. Primarily I’m not going to spend my evening study time working on tactics. My plan to keep on working on tactical acumen is to just solve a few here and there throughout the day on my phone. That should give me the 15-30 min a day I’d like to spend, and still leave my evening time open for other things.

Interestingly I felt the same kind of surge I feel in an actual game when I’m in time trouble as I neared the end of my 30 min session.

This led me to miss the last two problems in some sort of “ratings chase” as I was practically gambling by rushing my moves to try to get back to my all time high on chesstempo. Because of course it tells you when you set a record.

Clearly I’ll need to work on emotional control while solving.

I am fortunate in that I’m not a jittery player. I don’t shake or fidget when sitting at the board and I rarely get nervous until I’m deep in time trouble.

I’ve always taken exception to the fact that so many tactics trainers are timed.

Yes yes, in a game it’s you vs. the position *and* the clock.

When training, however, I think that it’s much more important to work on absorbing the patterns. The downside to the clock is that it practically eggs you on to make rash decisions which you haven’t properly calculated, thereby missing out on the opportunity to learn new stuff.

So how does a pro approach solving?

Let’s take a look at IM Andrey Ostrovskiy, who has many wonderful videos as well as an excellent Twitch channel.

As you can see, IM Ostrovskiy is not rushing to solve these positions. He’s taking his time and properly calculating everything prior to selecting a move. It’s also interesting to note how he flits between candidate moves the way that all of us do, rather than clean calculations to the end ala Think Like a Grandmaster.

A few weeks back I set a goal of solving tactics on chesstempo for an hour a day for 100 straight days.

A couple of issues immediately befell me. The first is that my job suddenly got more demanding. In fact, it looks like I’ll be travelling for work quite a bit over the next few months.

The downside to that is that those days are rarely short. And to be brutally honest the last thing I want to do when I get done with a 12 hour day in a strange city is rush back to the hotel and solve tactics.

If you happened to see my interview on chess^summit then you know that I was asked about this project and that I said I would be revising it and rolling it back out.

So the new plan is this…ideally I will get 30 minutes a day of tactics. However, I’m not going to focus too much on the length. If I feel like going longer I will. If I don’t have time to go that far, then I won’t. But the goal will be 30 minutes a day with at least *some* puzzles each day.

There may be unforeseen travel days, etc. where I am not able to do any, but I will try a more realistic goal this time.

The other issue I was having is that when I was spending an hour a day it was cutting far too deeply into my study time for other stuff.

Yesterday I played a game at the Southwest Club that I’m proud of. As you will see, it’s far from perfect, but I’m happy with the fact that I didn’t “play it safe” when it comes to material like I usually do.

[Event "Pepe LePew Stinky Smelly Swiss"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2018.01.04"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Yang, Alexander"]
[Black "Wainscott, Chris"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B90"]
[WhiteElo "1444"]
[BlackElo "1774"]
[Annotator "Wainscott,Chris"]
[PlyCount "54"]
[EventDate "2017.12.29"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Be3 {As I have only
recently begun playing the Classical Sicilian I haven&#8217;t see too many
variations OTB yet. However, this one was played against my by Adam Ninneman
recently, so I knew that the move preferred by Alex Yermolinski is} Ng4 7. Bc1
({The other main idea is} 7. Bg5 h6 8. Bh4 g5 9. Bg3 Bg7 10. Nb3 Be6 {and now
Adams-Kramnik 1995 continued} 11. Be2 h5 12. h4 gxh4 13. Bxh4 Rc8 14. O-O Bf6
15. Bg3 Rg8 16. Nd5 h4 17. Nxf6+ Nxf6 18. Bxh4 Nxe4 19. Bf3 Ng5 20. Bxg5 Rxg5
21. Qd2 Rg8 22. Nd4 Ne5 23. Be4 Qb6 24. Rfe1 d5 25. Bxd5 Bxd5 26. Rxe5 Rxg2+
27. Kf1 Qg6 28. Qb4 Bc4+ 29. Ke1 Qf6 {0-1 (29) Adams,M (2660)-Kramnik,V (2730)
Belgrade 1995}) 7... a6 (7... Qb6 {I wanted to play this move since the knight
cannot be moved due to the mate threat on f2, however, after a short think I
realized that nothing would come of it after} 8. Bb5 {although when looking at
the game with an engine it shows an interesting idea with} e5 9. Nd5 Qxd4 10.
Qxd4 exd4 11. Nc7+ Kd8 12. Nxa8 Be6 $15 {Black will soon have two pieces for
the rook, but not without some weaknesses to deal with.}) 8. f3 Nf6 9. Be3 e5
10. Nb3 Be7 11. Be2 {This seems inaccurate. I think that the bishop should be
left on f1 until White knows where the best square or diagonal for it really
is.} (11. Qd2 O-O 12. O-O-O b5 13. g4 $132 {And we&#8217;re off to the races.}) 11...
b5 12. g4 Bb7 (12... b4 13. Nd5 Nxd5 14. exd5 {I saw this far in my
calculations and then stopped and dismissed the idea since I wasn&#8217;t sure where
to put the knight. I should have looked deeper as after} Bh4+ 15. Kf1 Ne7 {
my pieces are on decent squares and once I castle I should be clearly better.})
13. Qd2 Rc8 14. O-O-O O-O 15. Rdg1 (15. Kb1 {This move should have been played
almost automatically as it prevents a lot of the tactical ideas in these types
of positions.} Qc7 16. g5 b4 17. gxf6 bxc3 18. bxc3 (18. Qxc3 Bxf6 $14 {
White&#8217;s queenside pawns are still intact here, but he doesn&#8217;t win a pawn as in
the main variation.}) 18... Bxf6 19. Qxd6 Qxd6 20. Rxd6 Rfd8 21. Rhd1 $16 {
White is far better regardless of the &#8220;bad&#8221; structure since Black&#8217;s is also
nothing to write home about.}) 15... Nb4 $6 (15... d5 $1 16. g5 Nxe4 17. fxe4
d4 $17) 16. a3 {For a couple of minutes I hesitated here. Yes, this was what I
was building up for, but I have had such a materialistic attitude in chess.
Far too often I have dismissed the dynamic possibilities and overly concerned
myself with counting pieces.} Rxc3 {After two minutes, however, I decided that
it&#8217;s time to become the player that I need to be and to assign the proper
importance to initiative and structural weaknesses.} 17. axb4 (17. bxc3 Nc6 18.
g5 Nh5 $14 {White is slightly better but Black has compensation for the
exchange.}) ({Not} 17. Qxc3 $4 Na2+) 17... Rc8 $2 ({I missed a nice shot with}
17... Nxe4 $3 18. fxe4 Rxe3 {and the rook is immune as} 19. Qxe3 Bg5 {would
win on the spot. We didn&#8217;t find this after the game with analysis either. I
have to credit this one to Stockfish.}) 18. h4 {Again I paused. I know that
it&#8217;s not the best idea to take on e4, but again, in an effort to embrace more
dynamism I went for it.} Nxe4 $5 ({More accurate is} 18... d5 {Robin
Grochowski and I looked at a lot of these lines after the game.} 19. g5 Nh5 20.
Nc5 (20. Bc5 Qc7 21. Bd3 Rfd8 $17) 20... d4 21. Nxb7 Qc7 22. Bxd4 exd4 23. Nc5
$17) 19. Qd3 $2 {White is clearly on tilt. Otherwise, why just give away the
pawn?} (19. fxe4 Bxe4 20. Bd3 ({Not} 20. Rh2 Rxc2+ 21. Qxc2 Bxc2 22. Kxc2 Qa8
$19 {Here, even though White has many more pieces, Black is far better as
White currently lacks coordination.}) 20... Bxh1 21. Rxh1 d5 22. Kb1 (22. Bc5
e4 23. Bf1 Bxc5 24. Nxc5 a5 $15) 22... Re8 23. g5 d4 24. Bf2 $14) 19... Nf6 20.
Qd2 Nd5 (20... d5 {This may be more principled, but I wanted to either get rid
of the dark square bishop or at least chase it to a worse diagonal.}) 21. h5 $4
Nxe3 22. Kb1 (22. Qxe3 Bg5 $19) 22... Bg5 23. Qd3 h6 24. Nd2 Nxc2 25. Qf5 Nxb4
26. Ne4 Bxe4+ {This wins on the spot, but it&#8217;s not the prettiest.} ({Here I
missed the beautiful} 26... Qa5 {as I thought mate was prevented by} 27. Nc3 {
However, I failed to notice that I don&#8217;t need the rook on c8 to guard the c1
square as the bishop does so as well.} Rxc3 28. bxc3 Qa2#) 27. Qxe4 Qa5 0-1

You must activate JavaScript to enhance chess game visualization.

I plan on making this the start of a new trend in 2018. It’s time to get back to my attacking roots and to be much more aggressive as long as I’m not being reckless.

This game, played a couple of months ago, is a nice example of converting a minor piece ending. I was up a pawn, but that isn’t always enough in these types of games.

[Event "Milwaukee Park System Swiss"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2017.11.02"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Wainscott, Chris"]
[Black "Hegelmeyer, Williams"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E94"]
[WhiteElo "1761"]
[BlackElo "1666"]
[Annotator "Wainscott,Chris"]
[PlyCount "85"]
[EventDate "2017.12.29"]
1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. d4 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. O-O ({The
previous time that William and I had played I had entered this sideline, which
is not very well trodden, but which I have good success. with.} 7. dxe5 dxe5 8.
Bg5) 7... exd4 {William has decided to deviate. I wasn&#8217;t surprised, but
neither was I prepared.} (7... Nc6 8. d5 Ne7 9. Ne1 Nd7 10. Be3 f5 11. f3 f4
12. Bf2 {This was the line I had been hoping to play.}) 8. Nxd4 Nbd7 ({More
common is} 8... Re8 9. f3 c6 10. Kh1 Nbd7 11. Bg5) 9. Be3 Nc5 (9... Re8 10. f3
c6 11. Qd2 d5 {This is the more usual way to play this position.}) 10. Qc2 $6 (
10. f3 {This would have allowed me to get out of the opening better.}) 10...
Ng4 {Oops. Now I have to trade off my light square bishop. Granted, it&#8217;s not
the end of the world since this isn&#8217;t a typical &#8220;race to the finish&#8221; style
KID, but I clearly have come out of the opening slightly worse.} 11. Bxg4 Bxg4
12. f3 Bd7 13. Rad1 Ne6 14. Rd2 Nxd4 $6 {This strikes me as quite dubious.} (
14... b6 15. b3 a5 16. Rfd1 Nc5 {This makes more sense to me. Start to clamp
down on the queenside dark squares, then anchor a knight on c5 to start
hitting the light squares as my light square bishop is gone.}) 15. Bxd4 Bxd4+
$2 {Strategically I think that it makes little sense to give up this bishop.} (
15... Bh6 16. f4 Be6 17. Nd5 Bxd5 18. cxd5 $14 {White seems better here, but
not by much.}) 16. Rxd4 f5 $2 {Back to back questionable moves. This just
seems to open up the king quite a bit, although I&#8217;m guessing that the idea was
to open up the position to favor the bishop.} (16... f6 17. Nd5 b6 18. Rfd1 Be6
19. b3 a5 20. R4d2 $14 {Again, White is slightly better here, but there is
still a very long way to go.}) 17. exf5 Bxf5 18. Qd2 Rf7 $2 (18... Qf6 {
Black needs to step off of the d file as the impending pin will cost material.}
) 19. c5 $1 Rd7 20. Rd1 d5 21. Rxd5 Rxd5 22. Qxd5+ Qxd5 23. Rxd5 Re8 {Here I
felt like I would win this. Not only am I up a pawn, but I&#8217;ve managed to keep
my queenside pawns from getting fixed on light squares.} 24. Kf2 c6 25. Rd6 Kf7
26. f4 ({More agressive is} 26. g4 Be6 27. b3 {and here Black can&#8217;t try to fix
the pawns on light squares and get rooks off the board since after} g5 28. Ne4
h6 29. Kg3 {White will soon be ready to crash through.}) 26... Re6 27. Rd7+ Re7
28. Rxe7+ Kxe7 {Now in a minor piece ending up a pawn this has become a two
result game.} 29. Ke3 b6 {Black is following the maxim to trade pawns, but not
pieces.} 30. b4 bxc5 31. bxc5 {Here I felt that Black was locked out of the
queenside while I was not. However, I can&#8217;t stray too far that way now since
it would leave the other side of the board vulnerable.} h6 32. Kd4 Ke6 33. Ne4
Bg4 34. Nd6 Kf6 35. g3 Be6 (35... Bf3 36. Ke3 Bd5 37. a3 h5 38. Ne4+ Ke6 39.
Ng5+ Kf6 40. h3 $16 {White will gradually be able to make progress on the
kingside before eventually heading to greener pastures on the far side of the
board.}) 36. a3 h5 (36... Bh3 {It was necessary to get the bishop out of the
line of fire with a move such as this or &#8230;Bd5.}) 37. Ne8+ $3 {I am as proud
of this idea as any that I have ever found.} Ke7 38. Ke5 Bd7 39. Nd6 Be6 {
Everything else was just as bad since I&#8217;d have played f5 after almost anything.
} 40. f5 gxf5 41. Nxf5+ Kd7 42. Nd4 Bg4 43. Kf6 1-0

One thing that I noticed yesterday that really came in to laser focus today is that I have a tendency to overly complicate things a lot of the time. There are many puzzles that I solved incorrectly because I would take an approach that would solve it while missing that there was a way to do it in fewer moves.

I’ve also started to notice that I have a tendency to miss tactics that involve pieces that hang in the middle of the lines. I also only notice loose pieces maybe half the time.

So those are things to work on.

After my session today my rating is 1579.7, representing a drop of 3.9 points. Insignificant whether that was a gain or a loss.

I also decided to start tracking how many problems I am solving correctly vs. missing. Today I solved 40 and missed 25. So again, this shows the percentage I will need to solve correctly in order to increase my rating.

I did email the admin of chesstempo regarding this challenge and something interesting I got back was this:

“Regarding your blog post, it is probably worth pointing out that to gain rating points you don’t really need to get that many more problems correct than incorrect to gain rating. The default difficulty setting (“normal”) gives you problems that are on average 100 points below your current rating. At that level of difficulty you get around a 66% success rate (again on average over a large number of problems, and assuming stable skill level). If you get higher than a 66% success rate, you’ll be gaining rating (again , on average over a large number of problems, short term fluctuations can lead to short term bursts of rating loss or gain). You can also change your difficulty level to change the success rate required to maintain a level rating. ‘Hard’ mode produces a 50% success rate over time if your skill level is stable as it gives you problems at your current level (on average). ‘Easy’ gives you problems 200 points below your rating, and you’ll get a roughly 80% success rate.” – Richard.

That is all interesting to know, although I think that I am going to just leave the settings as is and see what happens.